Idgie Says:This is another story of blacks and whites - stuck in their roles by fear, threats, societal expectations and life's disappointments. A story that is the current rage in today's Southern books, so unfortunately, while the town may be changed, the story itself has been told many times before and after this book. Though I do want to point out that this book first published in 2004 so while the story may seem old now, it was somewhat new at the time. Jonathan remains a fore-runner.
One of these ladies is a drunk who doesn't fit in with the wealthy women she now lives near and the other is a maid who was deeply wounded mentally by the Sheriff years ago and seeks revenge.
Together they come together in the same home and over an extended period of time form a bond to help each other heal.
One of the most interesting characters in this book is the 6 year old boy, full of plotting shenanigans which can harm both women. He's not Damien, but he certainly is filled with sneakiness and plans to get adults into trouble.
_____________________________________________________________
Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League
February 4, 2015
Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Maiden Lane Press
Language: English
(Originally published under the title: The View from Delphi 2004
Set in pre-Civil Rights Mississippi, Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League is the story of two young mothers, Hazel and Vida – one wealthy and white and the other poor and black – who have only two things in common: the devastating loss of their children, and a deep and abiding loathing for one another. Embittered and distrusting,
Vida is harassed by Delphi’s racist sheriff and haunted by the son she lost to the world. Hazel, too, has lost a son and can’t keep a grip on her fractured life.
After drunkenly crashing her car into a manger scene while gunning for the baby Jesus, Hazel is sedated and bed-ridden. Hazel’s husband hires Vida to keep tabs on his unpredictable wife and to care for his sole surviving son. Forced to spend time together with no one else to rely on, the two women find they have more in common than they thought, and together they turn the town on its head.
It is the story of a town, a people, and a culture on the verge of a great change that begins with small things, like unexpected friendship.
______________________________________________
Q&A
with Jonathan Odell, author of
MISS
HAZEL AND THE ROSA PARKS LEAGUE
Miss
Hazel and the Rosa Parks League
is publishing on February 4th, 2015—Rosa Parks’ birthday and sixty
years since the Montgomery Bus Boycott. How is Rosa Parks, despite not appearing
as a character in your book, central to your story?
Rosa Parks’
symbolic presence courses throughout the narrative. When, late in the novel,
word gets out about what she was up to in Alabama, her example inspires a group
of women in Delphi, Mississippi—where my novel is set—to take radical action. Like
poor, working black women across the country, this group of women strongly
identified with Mrs. Parks.
Your novel is
about many things—friendship, marriage, family, feminism, grieving the loss of
children, redemption. Can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind
the story?
A
catalyst was reading Pat Conroy’s poignant novel, A Prince of Tides. My God, I thought. If he can write about crazy
Southern families, why can’t I? I’ve got one.
I
had two primary questions I wanted to answer. The first was, How did my family get to be
the way they are? My mom and dad, both refugees from poor, backwoods farming
families, much like Hazel and Floyd in the novel, somehow pulled themselves
into a comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle. But like immigrants fleeing
horrors of another world, they talked very little about their childhood. The
second question was, What are the mechanics of making an entire race of people
disappear into the background, as whites did to blacks in Mississippi during
Jim Crow? The first question brought me into a new relationship with my
parents. The second question took me deep into the world of racial prejudice,
one I had been born into but taught not to see.
The two main
characters, Hazel and Vida, are young mothers, one white and one black. Are
they based on real people from your life?
A lot of the
book is drawn from my early life experience, much to my family’s horror.
Actually, the book began as an attempt to get even with everyone who had ever
done me wrong—teachers, schoolyard bullies, my preacher, and, of course, my
parents. Vida and Hazel began as absolute villains in my first draft. They
represented people in my life I wanted to settle a score with. Vida represented
Velner, a black lady my parents hired to take care of me and my brothers when
my mother took a job. I hated Velner and Velner hated me.
Hazel is definitely my mother. When I began the book, I was going through therapy and beginning to understand my family’s dysfunction. I was in my “angry truth-telling stage,” so I “fictionalized” every wrong my mother had ever perpetrated upon me in the first draft. In essence it was a poorly disguised hit piece. I even named the little boy Johnny so my mother would not miss the point.
When I finally let go of my agenda of trying to justify my resentment, I fell in love with both women. Now, even today, when I see my mother, she is so much bigger and grander than the box I had put her in. By letting go of the need to explain her, I discovered her. Writing the book served as an avenue for reconciliation with my family.
Miss
Hazel and the Rosa Parks League
is a revised version of your debut novel, The
View from Delphi, published ten years ago. Why did you decide to revise the
novel?
The
View from Delphi
was released in 2004 by Macadam/Cage, a highly respected but small West Coast
publisher (most well-known for publishing The
Time Traveler’s Wife), to positive reviews but limited distribution. The
publisher was falling on hard times; indeed, they later went bankrupt and
folded. After the success of my second novel, The Healing (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday), Maiden
Lane Press was convinced that my debut
deserved to reach a larger audience, in a revised edition. I enthusiastically
agreed to the project. Do overs may be common in kids’ games, but they are
extremely rare in the world of publishing.
What are the
differences between the two works?
The
new title and cover better reflect the promise of the book, i.e., a 1950’s
small-town Southern setting, an intimate feeling of family and friendship, a
twining of black and white storylines, and an irreverent strain of humor.
Miss Hazel is a hundred pages leaner than Delphi and has been restructured so that the narrative flows more logically. There is less backstory and “side” story. The goal of this version was to tighten, intensify, and deepen the relationship between Hazel and Vida. I believe the result is a much richer read.
There have been
comparisons of your book to The Help,
yet Miss Hazel and the Rosa Parks League
is quite different in many regards—not to mention that your book was originally
published years before The Help. How
do you feel about the comparison?
I
believe I may be the only person in American who has not read The Help nor seen the movie. I hear both
are quite entertaining and have stimulated a lot of needed conversation about
race. But because I began writing (and reading fiction!) late in life, I mostly
spend my time searching for books that inform what I am presently writing. When
I finished writing the final draft of Delphi in 2001—having done research for
it since 1988—I felt I was pretty much done with that era and topic and I moved
on to the subject of healing during slavery times. Now I’m learning about
Southern Pentecostal preachers, snake handlers, and gay life at the turn of the
century Mississippi.
But what I gather the two books have in common is that both take place in the Mississippi, maids are involved, and each is written by a white author. So beyond than, I can’t personally comment.
Why does race
appear so prominently in all your work?
It’s what I want
most to understand. Frankly, I think the advice “write what you know” isn’t
very helpful. What I know is boring—because I already know it. It doesn’t
challenge me to get out of my habitual way of seeing the world. But the things
I don’t know, and have the opportunity to discover, are what get me out of bed
in the morning. For me to keep my enthusiasm and creative energy focused for
the five or so years that it takes to write a novel, I find it essential to be
writing about what I am drawn to
know, what fascinates me, what consumes me, what expands me.
# # # #